


Escape

by Leamas



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - All Media Types
Genre: Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 05:36:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15112886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leamas/pseuds/Leamas
Summary: Bill Haydon goes to collect his cousin after the latest of her affairs draws to a close.





	Escape

“Wait here,” Bill murmured to his passenger as he got out of the car, smiling gently before shutting the door behind him and striding through the front doors of the hotel. It was small, but for a place so out of the way it was elegant. The carpets were sun-bleached, as were the chairs in front of the drawn windows, and the bannister had a few black smudges on it—the kind of marks that reminded Bill of being in someone’s home, where the wear-and-tear becomes part of the architecture and therefore went unnoticed.

A young man was sitting behind the reception desk, reading a book. He looked up as Bill neared, setting down his book before asking how he could help Bill, in Italian.

“I’m afraid not,” he said; his Italian wasn’t as great as his Russian or French, but he managed. “You don’t happen to have a room for myself and my wife? One night.”

“Just one night,” the man repeated, and looked at the book in front of him.

“Yes,” Bill promised. “We were meant to fly home tonight, but something came up, and we thought we’d see more of the country before we had to leave.”

“We’re a few hours from the airport,” the boy said as he told Bill the price. “You know how to get there?”

“Yes, yes,” Bill said. “It’s no trouble for me.”

“And when to leave.”

“Early afternoon, at the latest.”

The boy nodded as he took the was of cash in Bill’s hand, and Bill went back outside to the car to collect the luggage. He opened the door and leaned his head in. “It looks like they have a room, darling,” he said.

“Did you not make a reservation?” Ann asked, eyeing him carefully. She pushed her door open and stepped out. “That isn’t like you, Bill.”

“Of course it’s like me,” Bill said. “Have you really forgotten, when you were seventeen?”

A smile crossed her lips. “Once again, I was running away from a wholly unsatisfactory situation.”

“Escaping, dear,” he said, taking her bags and leading her inside. As they passed the counter he said, in English, that he’d just explained to the boy that they’d recently married. The boy didn’t so much as glance up at them.

In their room they settled down, Ann lounging comfortably on the creaky bed and Bill taking the chair. The room was small, but cozy. One of the curtains hung in front of the window, the ribbon to tie it out of the way now frayed, but Bill had a solid view of the street outside. He watched as nothing happened while Ann pulled out one of her magazines.

“I was surprised that you came to get me,” Ann said. “I figured that George would just pay for me to get back, and it would all fall to me to make that journey. In fact, I haven’t heard a thing from him—not besides the letter that you delivered.”

“Have you read it yet?” Bill asked.

“No,” Ann admitted. “I thought that I’d read it on the plane.”

“That’s a stunning display of patience.”

“Usually I don’t bother,” she said, speaking like it was a confession and not a known fact. “Why deny myself something that’s right there?”

“To enjoy it later,” Bill said. “Because you might read it and find that you don’t actually want to go back, but if you’re on a plane then it will be too late to change your mind.”

“Dear Marco doesn’t even know that I’m gone, bless him,” Ann said. “He won’t be home until tomorrow, you see, and even if he comes home to find the house empty, I doubt that he’ll that I’ve really left. It really isn’t too late to change my mind, I don’t think.”

“Do you want to?”

“Of course not,” Ann said. “I’m quite done here. In fact, I don’t think that I’d be able to stay another minute, even just to explain my departure and to say goodbye, and to ask for the repayment on that loan I had George give him.” Not specified if George knowingly gave this man a loan or not, but Bill didn’t need to guess. Ann looked like she was enjoying herself too much, lounging on the bed with her hair falling down her back, her legs neatly crossed over each other but her body still taking up the entire bed.

“Why should you do something that you don’t want?” Bill asked, throwing his own feet up on the second chair and leaning further back. He looked out the window. Still nothing. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting—or what he hoped to see. With a sigh he looked back at Ann. “You look lovely, by the way. It looks like the sun did you a few favours.”

Ann nodded. “I thought so, too, although after a while I found that I missed the weather at home terribly. You still haven’t told me why you came for me, Bill.”

“Should I not have bothered?” Bill asked. A few moments passed before he continued. Ann was waiting for her response, with no desire to say anything in the meantime—as Bill expected from her. “You must understand how stuffy it gets, back at the Circus. Some days listening to Control and Alleline natter on is enough to give me half a mind to defect, just to give them something new to talk about.” He waited until Ann smiled before he went on. “Thankfully your letter came, like a message from some kind of angel.”

“So I am your escape, as you put it. I think that I quite like that, Bill.”

“Or I’m running away,” Bill said, “as you put it.”

“I doubt that you ever would,” she said. “It isn’t something that I see in your character.”

“And what is in my character, dear?”

“Seeing something through to the end,” Ann said thoughtfully. “But that’s far too noble. No, I think that it’s far more likely that you simply like to see how far you can push things. Whether that’s a personal challenge—a question of how far you’re willing to go—or a question of how much you think that you’re getting away with…”

“Ann,” he said, equally thoughtfully. “I’d be very curious to hear what it is that you think that I’m getting away with.”

Her smile made him want to kiss her. They’d never done more than fool around a few times as teenagers—dangerous kisses that were anything but familial, wandering hands, gazes that lingered on each other for far longer than cousins should study one another—and realistically Bill didn’t see him ever wanting to do more, except when he entertained thoughts about how taboo it would be; the looks that they’d get from the people who knew and the ignorance of others, who thought that bringing a family member to bed would be too far even for the likes of Ann Smiley and Bill Haydon—or would they simply be proving the rumours about the aristocracy to be correct? But it wasn’t necessary. It was enough for them both to know that if either of them ever said the word, or let their hand linger too long on the other’s, that such a movement alone would open the door for all manner of debauchery.

Still, when she smiled like this it made him want to kiss her, and that in turn left him excited to betray her. Love her as he might, surely a woman like her would know that a man like him did not come here for only one reason; that a man like him was always after something, and escape from the unpleasant circumstances of his birth was really the least of it.

 

He left that night around nine, pausing to ask someone in the family who owned this quaint little hotel if he could borrow a key to the front door, as he couldn’t sleep and fancied taking a drive through the countryside to ease his mind.

“Are you worried about your plane tomorrow, sir?” a young woman asked. She didn’t look too much older than the boy Bill had talked to that afternoon, and he could similar curves on her cheeks and a distinctive parting in her hair that she shared with that boy.

“Nothing like that,” he said. “It would just be a shame to lie awake staring at the ceiling while my wife slept, with the whole countryside just behind that window.”

She handed over the key without any trouble and he thanked her, promising to be quiet and to lock the door behind him upon his return. He took the car and drove a few miles up the road, where there was a train station, and a man waiting for him, smoking. He finished the cigarette before crossing the road and climbing into the passenger’s seat. Only when Bill had driven away before speaking.

“Where is your cousin?” Karla asked.

“In the hotel,” Bill said. “If she asks, the staff will simply tell her that I went out for a driven. I couldn’t sleep, you see, but she’s a very heavy sleeper. Little will disturb her. Oh, and apologies that you can’t smoke in the car. The smell will linger, and I’m afraid that is something that she would notice.” He imagined Ann asking about it, and considered offering Karla a smoke anyway.

“I am very pleased you found an opportunity to speak to me.”

“I’m pleased my message was passed along,” Bill said. “It was such short notice.”

“There aren’t many opportunities where we can meet,” Karla said. “You’ve personally seen how quickly things fall apart when they’re over-planned.”

“It’s a delicate balance to find,” Bill said, “wanting to be prepared for everything, but leaving enough room for if something unexpected should happen. The Circus, it seems, hasn’t found it. We just have a whole lot of plans that never go anywhere—even if we weren’t doing our part to stop them, I’d be surprised if they got far.”

“They would get far enough.”

“I didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” Bill said. “As I said. We’re doing our part.”

They drove in silence for a time. The roads wound around the landscape so tightly that Bill couldn’t look away from them, but it was so dark that there was not much for him to see. The longer he drove the more the darkness seemed to develop its own sapience, pressing itself hard against the sides of the car and scraping against the wheels—although that might just have been the quality of the road.

He didn’t need to look at Karla to know that he was there, of course, and in its own way just the silent presence of the man, invisible to him while he looked on at the road ahead, was powerful enough. Having the chance to look at Karla and run his eyes over the man’s dark hair and scratched face might have taken away from some of the glory of this moment, the intimacy of feeling his presence. Strange how often he thought of touching Karla—how often he longed to look at Karla just to remember that he was there—until the rare moments when he had Karla in his presence, and touching him became something sacrilegious and wholly unnecessary.

“You certainly went out of your way to meet me,” Bill finally said.

“Did you not think I would?” Karla asked. “Practicality notwithstanding.”

“It’s always nice to be reminded that I’m important to you,” Bill said. “You think of me often.”

“I see no reason why I wouldn’t.”

“One day I’ll be going back with you,” Bill said, “instead of dropping you back off at that bloody train station so I can ferry my stupid, wayward cousin back to London.”

“You are close to your cousin.”

“One of my best friends since I was a child,” Bill said. “My partner in crime, before I realised there were more exciting ways to apply myself and then disgrace myself. She’s George Smiley’s wife—I believe I told you that.” He glanced over to see if the name would garner a reaction from Karla, although of course it didn’t. There was no patient waiting for a smile to appear on Karla’s face. Although he was a warm man with a solid presence, there were parts of him that were best seen in the light.

“You’ve told me about Ann, and about Smiley. What will he think about you coming to fetch his wife?”

“Impossible to say. He’ll probably thank me for it, regardless of how he feels. Maybe I’ll have Ann invite me around for dinner.”

“That sounds like it would be a good dinner party,” Karla said, “whether it’s just the two of you, or any of your other mutual friends who might have missed her company while she was away.”

“An absolute shame,” Bill said, “that you couldn’t be there. Could you imagine the look on George’s face if I walked in and introduced you?”

He could imagine that look, and he could imagine the look on Ann’s, too. She’d be pleasant, polite, and vulgar; perceptively aware that there were forces at work that were completely beyond her, and that would infuriate her. Ann was a Lady not used to be left out of any part of the world—or she so used to it that she’d simply come to forget it. Either way, to find herself so suddenly aware that Bill and George, _her men_ , shared something that she was to have no part of, would wound her.

It was something that he could sympathise with. He supposed that he’d be unsettled himself if his only ally was George Smiley, instead of Karla.

 

“It’s dreadfully early,” Ann said the next morning, as it neared ten. “Why do we need to leave so soon? What time is check-out?”

“It’s noon,” Bill said, “but I think that we ought to leave sooner rather than later. You know what airports are like.”

“But Bill,” Ann said, “our plane doesn’t leave until this evening.”

“What would you rather we do?” he snapped. “Wait here for another two hours, doing nothing?”

“And what would you have us do?” she demanded. “Wait in an airport?”

“There’s plenty of time between now and this evening,” he said, aware of his irritability although he’d slept soundly the night before, slipping into the room long after midnight and making himself comfortable on the floor. He had a clear view of the sky from his window, the stars more brilliant than they’d ever look in London with all that smog and light pollution. In the morning the room lit up gradually, and by the time he was awake and dressed Bill saw that the day would be a warm one, crisp and delicate. It would be good weather for flying, provided it held—although Bill personally didn’t trust the weather when it came to things like that.

“For fuck’s sake, what’s your problem?” Ann said, pulling herself from the bed as though it threatened to keep her there. “You have an artistic soul but my God, if that doesn’t mean you are truly impossible sometimes.”

“I’m sure I’ve done things that would seem even more impossible than this, to you.”

“To me,” she said, with a bitter laugh. “Oh, Bill.”

“Yes?”

“Do you remember when we were younger, and you fancied being a man of leisure?”

“Someone would say that I still am.”

“Hardly! Look at yourself. I’ve never seen a man work as hard as you.” She smiled. “You’re a man of pleasure, maybe. A filthy hedonist who slipped out last night to make friends with one of the boy’s downstairs. No one would be surprised, if I told them.”

“But I can get away with it.”

“It must be genetic,” Ann said, “because I get away with everything, too.”

“It must be because they expect things from both of us,” Bill said, all too aware of the parts of his life that no one expected—the things that he would not be allowed, that he clung to most tightly of all.

It surprised him when Ann kissed him, although only for briefly. By the time that he realised what Ann had done she’d moved away, reluctantly returning to her things and gathering what she’d wear that day while travelling back to London


End file.
